It’s an interesting fact that the US lives in denial about the extent of the problems of racial discrimination. Go to most European countries and there’s an active debate about how to solve the problems of prejudice and bigotry. In the US, it’s not politically correct to even raise the issue. This does not deny that, every now and again, the question of race achieves prominence, as with the election of President Obama. Some commentators were so impressed by Obama’s success, they described this time as post-racial. Unfortunately, the arrest of Henry Louis Gates at his home raised the thorny problem of racial profiling by police officers and, when the President commented, there was a furore. It seems it’s never alright to express an opinion on the behavior of police offers when arresting uppity Harvard professors.

Against this background, it’s impressive that the Department of Urology at the University of California should have launched a study into whether there’s a difference in the incidence of erectile dysfunction (ED) between the different racial and ethnic groups. For the most part, research in the US never looks for differences between the races. To keep the peace, everyone is assumed to be the same. This university team was brave in tackling a topic that’s sensitive both sexually and culturally. It abstracted the medical data on 80,000 men from the California Men’s Health Study. These men were subdivided into three groups by age: between 45 and 48, 50 and 59, and over 60.

As everyone expected, the incidence of ED grew as the men aged. It affected 13% of men in the first group, 24% in the second and 44% in the third. There was then detailed analysis to discover whether there were differences depending on socioeconomic class and status, lifestyles, other medical conditions, and so on. Again, as expected, the study confirms men are significantly more likely to suffer from ED if they are overweight, drink too much alcohol, smoke and fail to exercise regularly. But what is interesting is that when the data was analyzed by selecting on the different racial groups of white, black, Hispanic and Asian, there was a statistically significant difference. It seems that, taking the white community as the base, Hispanic men are slightly more likely to suffer moderate to severe ED, while black and Asian men are less likely to suffer ED. This is not suggesting that black and Asian men have any kind of immunity. Merely that the results show a different level of ED in their communities.

This leads to an interesting conclusion. The population trends in the US already see a continuing swing likely to make the white group the minority within the next decade in some parts of the country. With the black and Asian groups also less likely to suffer from ED, this may have a slight effect in boosting their birth rates. However, the good news for all the racial and ethnic groups is that viagra was equally effective no matter who took the pills. As anyone who has every had ED since the launch of viagra on to the market can testify, the little blue pills work the first time for more or less everyone who takes it, regardless of race, religion or creed.